Hazardous air pollutants — or compounds known to cause cancer and other serious health problems — can pose serious worker safety concerns for industries that use or manufacture chemical and petrochemical products. The scale of the monitoring need is far-reaching and often includes industries such as automotive, medical sterilization, agricultural, chemical manufacturing, semiconductor and pharmaceutical, just to name a few.
Today, many industrial facilities use a variety of gas analyzer technologies to monitor for hazardous air pollutants whose levels are often regulated down to parts per million (ppm) because of long-term exposure risks. As more health data become available, regulated exposure limits continue to decline driving monitoring levels into the parts-per-billion (ppb) where few technologies are up to the task. This is especially true when adding in the natural presence of ambient air moisture and other chemical compounds that can not only mask the desired measurement but in some cases create false positives. All of which can prove to be devastating in a factory environment.